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Founders

Broad Institute was founded in 2003 and launched in 2004 through the extraordinary generosity and remarkable vision of Los Angeles-based philanthropists Eli and Edythe Broad. The Broads appreciated earlier than almost anyone else the promise of genomics to change medicine, and they saw the need to empower scientists to work together to realize that promise. Their founding gift was intended to allow the institute ten years to build and prove a new, collaborative model of science focused on transforming medicine. The Boston area’s pre-eminent biomedical research organizations — Harvard University and its affiliated hospitals, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology — shared the Broads’ vision and joined together with them as the founding partners of the Broad Institute. On September 4, 2008 (photo above), Eli and Edythe Broad announced they would endow the Broad Institute with an unprecedented $400 million dollar gift in addition to the $200 million already pledged, assuring the permanent status of the young organization. On July 1, 2009, the Broad Institute became a 501(c)(3) nonprofit research organization. In 2013 the Broads provided another $100 million to propel a second decade of transformative research.